Mueller doesn’t frighten Ivanka
Trump’s daughter says she has ‘zero concern’ about two-year probe
WASHINGTON— Ivanka Trump said in a new interview that she has “zero concern” about the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
She sought to play down the significance of a prospective Moscow real estate deal that the Trump Organization pursued while her father was running for president.
“I’m not, I’m really not,” said Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter and White House adviser, when asked during an interview with ABC News if she was concerned about any of her “loved ones” being caught up in Mueller’s probe.
Mueller has been investigating allegations of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election campaign.
“I have zero concern,” Ivanka Trump said.
She asserted that the pursuit of a Trump Tower project in Russia during the 2016 campaign is a facet of the Mueller investigation that has been overblown. “There’s nothing there, yet it’s weeks and weeks and months of headlines,” she said.
As part of a plea deal with Mueller, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen acknowledged that the pursuit of the project continued well into 2016, longer than he had previously acknowledged, raising questions about whether Moscow had leverage over Trump.
Cohen also said he had kept the president and his children apprised of progress on the deal, which never materialized. Ivanka Trump, who worked for the Trump Organization, told ABC that she “barely” knew about the prospective deal. “Literally almost nothing.”
“There was never a binding contract,” Ivanka Trump said. “I never talked to the — with a third party outside of the organization about it. It was one of — I mean we could have had 40 or 50 deals like that, that were floating around, that somebody was looking at.
Ivanka Trump also noted several major hotel chains have properties in Russia.
“It’s not like it’s a strange thing, as a hospitality company or a development company, to have a hotel or a property in Russia.”
“We’re not talking about Iran. It was Russia. And we weren’t even advanced enough that anyone had even visited the prospective project site. So it really was just a non-factor in our minds.”
Also Friday, Trump said her father had no role in granting security clearances to her or to her husband, Jared Kushner.
Trump discussed the process during an interview on ABC’s The View Friday. She said, “The president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance.”
The House oversight and reform committee is starting an investigation into the handling of security clearances by Trump’s White House and presidential transition.
Kushner worked without a full security clearance for the first year of the administration. He was granted a full clearance in the spring of 2018 after a lengthy background check. Trump recently said he was not involved in issuing Kushner’s clearance.